ABOUT THE FILM

“How dare you leave this family and walk away?” This is what Reed says to her dead father who in 1972 hijacked a plane and died in the process. Her anger toward him is not very different from the anger which Samia, Surida and Sarah feel toward their mothers who were always too busy fighting the Israeli occupation to be present in their lives. These are the main characters in “3 cm Less”, women who wish to reconcile with their family members by capturing their attempts to do so on tape.

Azza El-Hassan's work has been produced and shown by various international TVnetworks such as BBC, arte, YLE, ARD and many others. It has also been screened in film festivals and art venues around the world like, Yamamgata Documentary FilmFestival (Japan), International Film Festival IDFA (Holland), Lipzic (Germany)and many others.

About the Film

Filmed during the massive Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, 33 Days follows the real-life stories of four people: A theatre director working with children, an aid worker who coordinated emergency relief efforts, a journalist for an underground television station, and a mother trying to cope with her newborn baby.

Mai Masri (b. 1959) is a Palestinian filmmaker largely based in Lebanon. Masri received a degree in film production from San Francisco State University. She has directed and produced several award-winning films that have been broadcast and shown internationally.

About The Film

The film 1948 is a record of memories of a group of elderly Arabs. The director, Mohammad Bakri, employs the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. In their own words, the Palestinians interviewed describe the moments when they became refugees. They described the brutality in which they were deported, or the fear of massacre that made them and their families flee for their lives. They speak without blame or even protest.

Mohammad Bakri was born in the Palestinian village of Bi'ina in the Galilee in 1953. He attended elementary school in his hometown and received his secondary education in the nearby city of Acre. He studied acting and Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University in 1973 where he graduated two years later.

ABOUT THE FILM

The filmmaker returns to his hometown of Bethlehem during the Israeli army invasion of the city in April 2001. He goes to a barber to cut his hair and finds that the barbershop represents a microcosm of the community that comes to the shop in order to seek refuge from the warring world outside. The shop’s regular patrons strive for a measure of normalcy in their conversations and the enactment of their usual rhythms of life.

ABOUT THE FILM

A moment at the Bethlehem checkpoint, five years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, tracing the futility of the "peace" accords, as restrictions of Palestinian freedom of movement remain stagnant. The quiet right before a storm, a dream deferred.

Annemarie Jacir has been working in independent film since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of films including A Post Oslo History (1998), The Satellite Shooters (2001) and Like Twenty Impossibles (2003). She has taught courses at Columbia, Bethlehem, and Birzeit University. She also works as a freelance editor and cinematographer. Salt of this Sea (2008) is her first feature film, and her second work to debut at Cannes Film Festival. Having been banned from returning to Palestine, she now lives in Amman, Jordan.

ABOUT THE FILM

In A Space Exodus, Sansour posits the idea of sending the first Palestinian into space and referencing Armstrong's moon landing, she interprets this theoretical gesture as "a small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind".

Born in Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilises video art, photography, experimental documentary, the book form and the internet.